


Carrion

by AngelinaVansen (catherineflowers)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Mental Health Issues, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 09:33:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14787969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/AngelinaVansen
Summary: Five years after Voyager's return, everything is a mess. All I want is to save you, Seven, or the strength to walk away.





	Carrion

**Author's Note:**

> Written at some point in the early 2000s, for the JDI3 challenge. From a prompt by Rich Shultz.

I got up on Saturday morning, drank my coffee as I looked at the city through my apartment window, and decided it had been long enough.

I was going to see Seven.

I couldn't live like this any more. In half a house, empty and lonely and aching with a tragedy we should have been sharing, a tragedy that wasn't going away because we were apart.

Although it had been six months since she had been here, I still reached for her in the middle of the night. Still called out for her when I woke from one of my dreams.

I finished my coffee, took a shower and dressed. I brushed my hair and pinned it up in the style I had been wearing since I had been promoted to the Admiralty. I even put a little make-up on, and I rarely wore make-up.

I was going to bring her home.

Everybody tolerated her, Starfleet tolerated her, the Earth Authorities tolerated her, partly in deference to who I was, but also because of what had happened. But enough was enough. I knew that it wouldn't be long before she became something they could no longer ignore.

I packed a bag with a warm coat and some replicated lunch. I brought a flask of hot coffee, but only one cup, and I took a walk down to the transport station.

Inside, the young officer straightened when he saw me, back stiffening and arms going behind his back. 

"At ease," I told him wearily. I wasn't in the mood to play Admiral, I'd been on leave far too long. "Just beam me to the Bay, please," I told him.

"Yes ma'am," he snapped.

I stepped onto the pad, told him to energise, and everything went blue.

The standard beam-in site was some way up the beach from Seven, for which I was grateful. I pulled the coat from my bag at once; it was absolutely freezing here in winter. I snuggled into its depths and pulled the hood up as I started to walk towards her.

Immediately I was hit by the memories, intense and overwhelming. If I thought they were bad at night in my own bed, here they were a hundred times worse. How did Seven stand to live here?

I couldn't help but torment myself. There was the dune we had sat behind. That was where we put our blanket. Here was where we had built a sandcastle. Over there, up that path, that was where I ran for help. Help I got too late.

How did she do it? Living here, waking to this every day? Tears came again and I let them, as my counsellor had told me was best. The wind caught them and blew them down my face and off my cheeks.

Then, I saw Seven. Nothing more than a blurry figure at first, seen through the haze of my tears, but she was there, outside the home she had built for herself. Tall and pale and blonde, her hair six months longer and unbrushed for so long it had become dreadlocks. 

I saw her and she saw me and straight away she came to me, wrapping me in her arms and holding me against her chest, where I cried against her bosom and she cried into my hair.

I looked up at her, and she bent to kiss me with the full perfect lips I remembered so well. Despite where she lived and the condition of her hair, she was clean. Her skin was still luminous and her teeth were perfectly white. She looked beautiful. 

"Kathryn ..." she said in a voice so tremulous I thought she probably didn't believe I was real.

"I'm here," I whispered, and reached up to touch her cheek. "Sshhh, I love you, it's okay. I love you."

She took my hand and pulled me into her home. Inside it was dark and surprisingly warm and we fell onto the sandy floor and kissed greedily for what seemed like hours. Points of daylight streamed in through the holes in the walls and glittered in Seven's eyes and on the metal of her implants.

We kissed until we were breathless; until we were so aroused it was unbearable, and so we didn't bear it. We stripped each other naked and she spread my legs and made love to me with her mouth and then her fingers and then her mouth again. I howled and whimpered and wept in ways I had never done at home, loudly, enormously. When I came I threw my head back and roared like a wild animal. Still crying, even through my joy.

Then I threw myself on top of Seven and attacked her nipples with my teeth, pushing down into the cushion of her breasts with my hands and pulling back against the delicate rose of her teats. She moaned and gasped at the bittersweet sensation, the pleasure and the pain.

"Kathryn ..." she panted, again and again. "Kathryn, Kathryn, yes Kathryn ... good ... more ..."

I nuzzled along her belly with my tongue, gathered her thighs into the crooks of my elbows and buried my face between her legs. She was wet and urgent and hot and desperate, grinding herself against me as I licked her, drinking from her. 

I struggled for breath even as I sought to push my face harder against her, smothered by the press of her thighs on my cheeks and by the force of her hand on the back of my head. 

Seven gave a lusty cry and arched upwards, nothing but her skull and her heels touching the floor as she came. For a moment I thought the force of her thrusting would knock my front teeth out; I bit my own lip and tasted blood as she ground against my mouth.

Afterwards, she sat up and got dressed, while I lay naked on the sand beside her. I reached out to stroke her back. She said nothing and moved away from my hand.

"You are bleeding," she told me.

I dabbed my lip with the back of my hand. "Yes, I think I bit myself," I told her.

Now that the haze of passion had faded, I took the opportunity to look around me. Seven's home, such as it was, appalled me. It was odds and ends of plastic sheeting and metal, and looked only a single room big. 

The area stunk of fish and seaweed, and a cold wind blew in with the tide. What the hell did she live on? Well, she probably still didn't need much food. And she was happy in all this?

"I'm about to go snare a few crabs for supper, Kathryn, then check my fishing lines," she smiled. "Would you like to join me?"

I nodded and sat up to dress with her. My hair, the Admiral's professional pleat, had started to come undone. I let it unravel totally, pulling the last remaining pins out and putting them into my pocket. I doubted very much that Seven would mind.

I pulled my heavy coat back on and we stepped back out of her shelter and walked by her side up the beach to where her lines were. We said nothing on the way; we let the mournful moaning of the wind say everything for us.

She checked her lines while I hung back, not keen on getting my feet wet in the dumping surf. I noticed she had created a little device for each line, something that glowed green with a Borg power node. I had no idea what it might be used for, but it made me smile. A little glimpse of the real Seven, the Seven I loved.

"Come back with me," I blurted suddenly. Totally without preamble.

She looked at me, a little shocked, I think.

"Please," I added. "Please, Seven. Come home."

She shook her head. "I cannot, Kathryn," she told me.

"When then?" I asked. "You say you cannot, what does that mean? Not now? Not ever? You can't stay here forever, Seven, the authorities ..."

"They cannot force me to leave," she insisted. "I would return."

"That's ridiculous," I chided her. "Just look at yourself, look at the way you're living ..."

"I'm not leaving!" she shouted. Loud enough for her voice to echo out across the bay. "I cannot."

"I know it's difficult ..."

"Do you, Kathryn? I do not believe you do. I do not see you enduring these difficulties, I see you getting up every day and returning to your life exactly as before!"

"I've been on leave!" I shouted back. "For six months! That's almost unheard of. I can't sleep at night, I can't get the thoughts out of my head. It's driving me crazy. And to cap it all, I've lost you, too, haven't I."

Seven looked away. "I cannot leave," she said again. "I cannot leave him here alone."

I saw her eyes fill again with tears, and she angrily tried to wipe them away before turning from me, wading out into the sea up to her knees.

I stood on the shore, only a few metres away from her but half a galaxy apart. I did not know what to say to her. We were dealing with our grief in such different ways.

I turned away to gaze up the beach towards Seven's home. Although the sky was grey and the sand looked pale in the winter daylight, it barely looked different to the day it had all happened here.

Six months ago, you see, Seven and I had been a family. We had been married four years, and we had a two year old son named Julien. Yes, our biological son. We had chosen science, rather than nature, to help us in our quest to become parents.

The Doctor had helped us; he had impregnated Seven aboard his ship, the USS Fort Kinnaird, and we could not have been happier. 

Julien's birth had been widely celebrated, his christening attended by almost the entire of Voyager's crew. Seven and I had even posed with him for a celebrity publication, the heroic mothers with their beautiful son.

He was beautiful, too. So beautiful. Seven's eyes and my mouth. Red hair and freckles. We had watched him grow into a bouncing toddler, and he had been a constant joy. 

He changed so much in our lives, particularly Seven's. So much of the Borg had melted away from her, leaving her soft and maternal and carefree. She had enjoyed him so much. She had left Starfleet and devoted herself to raising him, teaching him patiently as she herself had been taught not so long ago on Voyager. 

I had still worked, though. Too much, in retrospect. The Admiralty had gripped me more than I ever thought it would, and I had been drawn into the late nights and urgent meetings and the politics of Starfleet Headquarters. 

Not that I hadn't felt guilty. When I was with them, Seven and Julien were my world. I adored them utterly, in a way that secretly surprised me. I had never realised how good it would be to come home to a loving family.

For the first time, I had begun to understand my father.

That was partly what our weekend at the Bay had been about. A chance to show them both how much they meant to me, how much I loved being a family. In a small hotel by the beach, Seven and I had rediscovered each other while our son napped in his crib.

I suppose you could have called it our second honeymoon. If it hadn't ended the way that it did.

On the Sunday, the weather had been wonderful. Brilliant sunshine when we awoke, so naturally, we decided to take a picnic to the beach and spend the day playing on the sand and in the water.

We spread out a blanket and had a lovely day together. I remember how beautiful Seven looked that day. She had let out her stunning long blonde hair and worn a pink two-piece swimsuit that had shown off the remarkable figure that had not been at all diminished by child-bearing. 

Perhaps that was to blame. Heady from so much sex and from the anticipation of more later, I had kissed her. I pulled her towards me as she sat beside me on the blanket, rolled on top of her and kissed her thoroughly. Not worried about who saw me.

I remember her eyes as I pulled back from her kiss, happy and sparkling blue in the bright sunshine. Sometimes I think of that, her eyes, at that moment. It was the last moment Seven of Nine would ever be happy.

We had gotten up and held hands, laughing at ourselves for being so overcome. Seven started to look around. It took me a moment to realise, all the time at work had dulled my parental senses, but she was looking for Julien. Looking for him and not seeing him.

I tried to reassure her at first, insisting that he couldn't have gone far, saying that someone must have seen him.

She had let go of my hand and walked away, fast. Urgent. Looking up and down, behind dunes, searching the horizon for a sign, any sign. Running to passers by, begging them for information.

She turned to me and shouted at me, shouted at me to do something, anything. 

I had not known what to do. All those crises I had faced on Voyager, all those enemies, all those battles, life or death, and I had not known what to do.

Crunch time, Admiral Janeway. Crunch time.

Then she had seen him. Little Julien, our son, face down in the sea between two waves, bobbing in his little red t-shirt. Floating, being turned by waves, his diaper weighing him down and pulling him down and then up again ...

I stopped thinking about it then. I always had to stop thinking about it at that point. It was beyond terrible. Beyond painful. More than my sanity could cope with.

I turned back to Seven and the sea, the sea where our son had died. She was adjusting something on the end of one of her lines, setting it again.

I understood her, of course I did. Part of me had wanted to stay here forever, too, never to move away from the time we had made one mistake and had one lapse of concentration and it had cost us everything.

I thought of her here every night, wishing Julien goodnight, tucking him in and kissing him even though he was only with her in spirit. As crazy as I knew that notion was, I envied it. God knows I did.

But I loved her and I wanted her to come home. Visiting her every day had not helped. Nor had leaving her here for months on end. Nothing seemed to help. 

She waded back to shore and started to walk back towards her shelter. She didn't look at me.

I followed her nonetheless, keeping pace with her even when she lengthened her stride and tried to leave me behind. She couldn't even lock me out of her shelter; the thing had no door. She went inside and threw herself into a corner, burying her face into one of the plastic sheets. I didn't know if she was crying. She was always so quiet when she cried.

I sat behind her on the sand and gently stroked her back. Not saying anything, not intruding. There was nothing I could say to Seven, no platitudes, no reassurances. I was just here for her, that's all I could do.

Eventually she lifted her head and looked at me.

"Go home, Kathryn," she said. "I am fine when you aren't here."

I shook my head. "I'm not fine when you're not there," I told her, and it was the truth. "I need you to come home and look after me."

Seven swallowed, her pale throat bobbing up and down in the dim light.

"Please," I continued. "I can't sleep at night, I have terrible dreams, I wake up and I need you so much, Seven. I need you ..."

I held out my arms to her, not knowing if she would hold me or not. Not knowing if she thought me pathetic. It had been so long since we had loved each other.

For a long moment, she didn't move. She looked at me with eyes that had used to be blue but were now sullenly grey, the colour of the sea that had stolen our son from us.

Then she held me. Oh God, she held me so tightly I thought she would break me, arms wrapped around my back, hands clutching my ribs.

"I need you too, Kathryn," she whispered into my hair.

I clutched her back, as strongly as I could. Buried my face in her neck and kissed the soft skin there. I was so empty without her. So useless. She was everything to me.

"Please Seven ... please ..." I begged. "Say you'll come home."

I could not go back to the transport site without her now, I could not beam back and go to our apartment and contemplate another night alone in our bed by myself. I thought I would go mad if I had to.

The thought of her here in this horrible place was too much. It was almost as bad as that thought of Julien in the sea, dead and lost to us forever. 

I knew if she didn't come back now, she would be just as lost.

She slowly pulled back from me and I wiped my eyes self-consciously and sniffed. I could not look at her, I did not want to see what I knew would be on her face right now.

She would say no. I knew she would. She had not moved from this spot for six months, had not even attended Julien's funeral or his memorial service. She had not been able to. Why I thought a visit from me and a quick roll in the sand would change her mind ...

"I will come," she whispered then, so low I barely heard her over the crash of the waves.

"What?" I asked.

"I will come home," she clarified, not looking at me and playing her fingers through the sand. "If you need me."

I swallowed hard, closing my eyes against the sudden slap of emotion. "Really?" I asked in a voice that was little more than a whimper.

She nodded. "I thought you were functioning well," she whispered. "I imagined that you went back to work, and that Julien's death had not been a concern to you."

I could not speak.

"I hated you," she said. "I stayed here partly out of spite, so that everyone would think you cold and uncaring."

I reached out to her, stroked the soft skin on her cheek above her star-shaped implant. Sometimes it struck me how little Seven still understood about human behaviour. "Oh Seven," I murmured. "You couldn't have been more wrong."

"I have needed you," I told her. "Our house ... it's so empty there alone. All your clothes are still there, your books and your paintings and your letters ..."

Her face lit up for a moment. Before Julien's death, Seven had loved to write long letters, on paper, to send to our friends. "Has the Doctor written?" she asked.

"Of course he has. I've saved them all for you, Seven. I hoped you'd come back and read them one day." I looked at the ground, thinking of the paper bundles I had tied with ribbon and saved for her in a drawer. 

She smiled, a bittersweet smile that turned down at the corners as her eyes glistened with tears in the low light. It was all waiting for her, everything. Our whole lives were still there waiting for Seven. I needed her to understand that.

"I want to read them," she said, and she sounded so lost, so alone. She sounded the way she had that first day on Voyager, when she was half a drone and in my brig, threatening to kill me. 

I wanted to hold her, the way I had in the brig that day. With my arms around her, mothering her and loving her despite everything. I had felt it even then. Seven and I were meant for each other.

I looked at her, and we shared smiles that trembled with tears. She was coming home. She wanted to. 

I imagined it, so wonderful. Waking up tomorrow morning, a Sunday morning, with Seven beside me. Perhaps even kissing her awake as she lay there, perhaps making love with her.

Taking her out somewhere to eat breakfast together, talking idly over coffee and croissants in a caf�. Maybe holding her hand, touching her face. Kissing her in the park as we walk home. 

Of course, I thought of the sad things, too. How would she react when she saw Julien's nursery? Several months ago, I had turned it back into my study, despite the fact I had no work to do in it. 

I had no idea how she would feel about that. Perhaps she would think it was an erasure, a denial, perhaps she would be right. I had done it during my darkest days, I had done it to save my sanity. I wasn't sure I would be able to explain it to her.

But she was coming home. That was what was important. Tomorrow morning she would not be here on this beach, living in this horrible shelter and catching fish to live on. Everything else we could deal with, everything else we could face.

"Let's go," she said to me. "Now."

"Now?" I asked her. I had imagined that she would need longer, that she would want to pack some things to bring with her, but then I remembered where she was. What was she going to bring? Plastic sheeting and a couple of shells?

She nodded in response to my question, setting her mouth in a grim line and stepping outside her shelter. Despite her haste, I suspected that this was not easy for her.

I got to my feet and followed her, watching her in the cold beach light for the last time, the Seven she had become. The quick wind on her pale face, blowing her blonde dreadlocks out behind her. Her wise, tired eyes. She was heart-wrenchingly beautiful. For a few seconds it seemed almost a shame.

"Where is the transport site?" she asked.

I nodded up the beach, to where I had beamed in. 

She swallowed and walked towards it, ahead of me, her long legs easily outpacing me. 

"Seven!" I called to her, feeling left behind.

She turned to me and I held out my hand for her to hold. "Please," I said.

She hesitated for a second and then took my hand in her Borg hand and squeezed it. 

"I love you, Seven," I told her.

She nodded grimly. "I love you too Kathryn," she replied. 

She held onto my hand as I hit my combadge and asked for a beamout.


End file.
